Philosophical Clerihews

ByDean Zimmerman

I've wasted an inordinate amount of time on the lowest
verse form in existence, the Clerihew. Here's the cream or the dregs, depending
on how you look at it.

The first one ever written (1890, by the 16-year-old E.
Clerihew Bentley) went like this:

Sir Humphry Davy
Detested gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered Sodium.

Here's a really good one by Maurice Hare:

Alfred de Musset
Used to call his cat Pusset.
His accent was affected.
That was to be expected.

The Poet's Manual and Rhyming Dictionary of Frances
Stillman defines the clerihew as "a humorous pseudo-biographical quatrain,
rhymed as two couplets, with lines of uneven length more or less in the
rhythm of prose. It is short and pithy, and often contains or implies a
moral reflection of some kind. The name of the individual who is the subject
of the quatrain usually supplies the first line."

Bentley himself wrote a few on philosophers. W. H. Auden
has a book of clerihews with ones on Kierkegaard, Hegel, and a couple of
others. Paul Horgan's book of clerihews has a few as well. By and large
the ones on philosophers aren't very good. The best I know of are these:

Desiderius Erasmus
Suffered from one of the rare asthmas.
His worst wheezes
Were caused by over-ripe cheeses.

(Paul Horgan)

John Stuart Mill,
By a mighty effort of will,
Overcame his natural bonhomie
And wrote Principles of Political Economy*

*-`With some of their Applications to Social Philosophy'.

It was a weakness of Voltaire's
To forget to say his prayers,
And one which to his shame
He never overcame.

Sir James Jeans
Always says what he means;
He is really perfectly serious
About the Universe being Mysterious.

(all by Bentley)

But the largest batch of philosophical clerihews follows...

Philosophical Clerihews

by Dean W. Zimmerman

This form was evidently
invented by E. Clerihew Bentley.
He did nothing else well,
but what the hell?

Moses Maimonides
wrote vast quantities
and stood for amity
in an age of Kalamity.

G. E. Moore
was a bit of a bore;
more an old fossil
than a Cambridge Apostle.

By ghosts, C.D. Broad
was not generally overawed;
but he looked a trifle haggard
after his Examination of McTaggart.

Fearing Wittgenstein was blotto,
Popper adopted the motto:
"I will not argue with a joker
who's brandishing a red-hot poker."

"Peter Geach!" said God,
"would it not be slipshod
were I to raise not the authentical
you, but someone relatively identical?"

Roderick Chisholm
was never accused of asceticism
by Roderick Firth,
who was equally down-to-earth.

Nicholas Rescher
is under no pressure
to write another book;
but look!